One year and also one month...

Tomorrow, June 17th, is a dual anniversary.

The first anniversary is that exactly one year ago I started this site. Wow. What a progression! The first several months were mainly filler while the process dragged on and on, but you can see the whole Alexei Leonov thing unfold as the months went by.

By November/December, I seemed to find a voice for the blog. The two travel posts around that time got me on a roll. They really helped me develop a posting style for our Russia trips.

Then came the infamous mailbox saga. Having successfully managed to include Mr. T, Chucky, and Vladimir Putin in one single posting, I was pretty confident that I had this whole blog thing mastered and was ready for the main event.

The stat counter was an interesting addition. I kept seeing "Kerrville" show up all the time (that's my sister's residence). When things are slow, I can pick out who's checking the blog.

Just yesterday the site went over 5000 hits since I added the counter last October. The amount of hits between June and October was probably only on the order of a hundred or two. Not many people knew about it back then other than some family and a few close friends. There are popular sites that get more than 5000 per second I'm sure, but I'm suprised at the interest this little site generated.

Here's a plot of the weekly hits since I added the statcounter. You can clearly see trip one was very busy. Trip two, not so much, and it nearly blends into trip three. The week we got home was the second biggest week.

For the record, the greatest single day of hits was February 27, 2006 with 251 hits. That was supposed to be the day we met Jason, but it turned out to be a couple days later. I guess there were a lot of people concerned about us back in the States.

The website really served a good purpose and I hope one day Jason Alexei will appreciate it. It really is a chronicle of how he came to meet his parents. I'm glad we were able to share some of it with our friends and family.

The second anniversary tomorrow is that it will be one month since we arrived home (it was four weeks ago last Wednesday). Jason is doing great. He laughs a lot and is crawling so much better. He doesn't growl as much, but still saves it for special occaisions. He's gaining weight and is growing. His hair is more blonde.

Probably the biggest compliment we got in the last month was at the UAB International Adoption Clinic. Dr. Chambers saw us in the lobby before our appointment and looked us over. Later she told us she really had too look hard at Jason to tell if he was an orphanage kid. We almost had her fooled, but that just shows how well he's doing.

Here's Jason playing peek-a-boo with a blankie.





















I figure if I post an update with no pictures of Jason somebody just might hack the website to punish me...